{"id":67,"date":"2009-07-01T11:09:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T11:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/underground-ethics-a-subway-series-part-iii-would-you-let-your-kid-ride-the-train-alone.html"},"modified":"2009-07-01T11:09:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-01T11:09:00","slug":"underground-ethics-a-subway-series-part-iii-would-you-let-your-kid-ride-the-train-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/underground-ethics-a-subway-series-part-iii-would-you-let-your-kid-ride-the-train-alone.html","title":{"rendered":"Underground Ethics: A Subway Series. Part III: Would You Let Your Kid Ride the Train Alone?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Bhp6E5lOD_o&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Bhp6E5lOD_o&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/object><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This mom did. She let her 9-year-old son ride the NYC subway alone, giving him 20 bucks, a map and a Metrocard, along with some words of advice. Why? Because he wanted to.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/freerangekids.wordpress.com\/\">Lenore Skenazy<\/a> is a writer and mother of two who believes kids grow up better when they have some breathing room and space to explore. Her book is &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0470471948\/ref=s9_simz_gw_s0_p14_t1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_s=center-2&amp;pf_rd_r=0DQG2RFFP85D4ZS71TFS&amp;pf_rd_t=101&amp;pf_rd_p=470938631&amp;pf_rd_i=507846\">Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry<\/a>.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>In theory, I LOVE what she did. I absolutely respect the idea of raising independent kids. In fact, Beliefnet&#8217;s got a whole page of resources on bring up kids with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Love-Family\/Family-Values-Toolkit\/Family-Values-Courage.aspx\">courage<\/a> and other great attributes to give them a strong moral compass and help them through life. It&#8217;s called the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Love-Family\/Family-Values-Toolkit\/index.aspx\">Family Values Toolkit<\/a>, and I helped build the splash page and downloadable pdf guides for one of our sponsors, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.responsibilityproject.com\/familyvalues\">Liberty Mutual<\/a>, as part of my work as a web producer for Beliefnet. (Sorry for the pander, folks, but I was very proud of the page I built!)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>However. I also live in NYC. And I take the subway. As you&#8217;ll have seen from my <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/underground-ethics-a-subway-series-part-i-how-the-emergency-gate-shames-me.html\">prior posts<\/a> on the subject, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/06\/when-does-bad-etiquette-become-immorality-on-the-subway-of-course.html\">my commute<\/a> is not exactly my favorite part of my day. And my faith in my fellow man is at a lowwww ebb whenever I head underground. I tend to see everyone around me as a perv, a stalker, and a loony. As a teen riding on the train to school, I can&#8217;t tell you the number of times I had my bum grabbed or saw some guy flashing his privates (or worse). Maybe I&#8217;m being a wuss, but I really could have done without those &#8216;learning experiences.&#8217; So, stats or no stats, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d have done what this mum did.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">Would you?<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This mom did. She let her 9-year-old son ride the NYC subway alone, giving him 20 bucks, a map and a Metrocard, along with some words of advice. Why? Because he wanted to. Lenore Skenazy is a writer and mother of two who believes kids grow up better when they have some breathing room and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","category-parenting-responsibility"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Underground Ethics: A Subway Series. Part III: Would You Let Your Kid Ride the Train Alone? - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/underground-ethics-a-subway-series-part-iii-would-you-let-your-kid-ride-the-train-alone.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Underground Ethics: A Subway Series. Part III: Would You Let Your Kid Ride the Train Alone? - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This mom did. She let her 9-year-old son ride the NYC subway alone, giving him 20 bucks, a map and a Metrocard, along with some words of advice. Why? Because he wanted to. 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}